Adirondack chairs are a larger type of chair and are very popular. For many years, these chairs were made of wood with the pieces of the chair nailed, glued, bolted, or screwed together to form a single unit. The chair has a straight back that is formed by multiple wooden planks that extend from a seat at an angle. Most wooden Adirondack chairs are not foldable. They are heavy and also very difficult to stack. Adirondack chairs have not been made or sold with headrests or lumbar supports.
More recently, some Adirondack chairs have been made of plastic. These chairs are molded to look like the old wooden Adirondack chairs. Such molded chairs generally did not include headrests or lumbar supports.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2006/0163920 to Adams discloses foldable Adirondack chairs. The chairs may be stacked on top of each other by folding the rear legs to a position substantially parallel to the seat and subsequently positioning nesting the chair within a second chair. Unfortunately, this method of stacking Adirondack chairs can provide a stack of chairs that is not straight. Often, the stack of Adirondack chairs disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2006/0163920 has a forward lean, which can cause the stack of chairs to fall down.
Further, Adirondack chairs often do not provide a lumbar support or a headrest for a seated user. Perhaps one reason why Adirondack chairs have not been made with lumbar supports is because the chair back is inclined backwards at a fixed angle relative to the seat. Simply placing a conventional lumbar support on the chair back may work for some people but can make certain users uncomfortable. For instance, a lumbar support of an Adirondack chair may be positioned such that it only provides desirable support to a person of a particular height. Shorter or taller seated users may be made less comfortable by such a lumbar support. The same problem exists with headrests. This is a particularly troublesome problem for Adirondack chairs due to the size and configuration of the seat and back portions of such chairs.
This magnitude of the inconsistent comfort and support a lumbar support or headrest may provide a user is even greater for Adirondack chairs that are integrally molded as a unitary structure because of the costs associated with forming the molding dies for such chairs. It is not cost effective to make different chairs having different lumbar supports or headrests in different molds. Due to the costs associated with molding lumbar supports or headrests and because the conventional lumbar supports and headrests can make some users uncomfortable, plastic molded Adirondack chairs do not include lumbar supports or headrests. In fact, it is believed that plastic molded Adirondack chairs with fixed backs have never included lumbar supports.
An Adirondack chair is needed that includes a lumbar support and a headrest. Preferably, one universal lumbar support and headrest is provided in such chairs to provide comfortable support to most, if not all, users seated in an Adirondack chair. Such chairs would also preferably include a mechanism for permitting the Adirondack chairs to be vertically stacked on top of each other such that the stacked chairs are substantially straight.